Sideling Court and the Beechwood Subdivision

Introduction

This article is a history of Beechwood, a small subdivision organized largely around Sideling Court along Beulah Road at the Vienna Town line. The article tracks property transactions from the Colonial Era to the the establishment of the subdivision and Sideling Court in the 1970s. As part of the history, the article provides short biographical sketches of the people who owned the land over that period. These people include:

–a war hero who took part in America’s very first and very last combat of World War II;

–a diplomat who helped to save European Jews fleeing from the Nazi’s genocide;

–a scientist who first patented a now-ubiquitous military technology;

–an eventual great-great grandmother who took on technical schooling in an era when that was not common, comforted the dying in her own old age, and died a centenarian;

–an official from the Kennedy Administration;

–mothers, homemakers, and women who were early participants in the workforce;

–members of the Vienna town council; the wife of the Town’s first mayor; and the last official surveyor for Fairfax County.

Sideling Court, a short road at the Vienna town line on the west side of Beulah Road, was formally established in 1977 with the deed of dedication for the Beechwood Subdivision. Beechwood ended up having two parts: one section constituting the original Beechwood Subdivision (see the red “B” + “D” on the graphic below) and a Beechwood Section 2 dedicated and subdivided in 1979 (“A” + “C” on the graphic). The original Beechwood section has eight parcels/houses; Beechwood Section 2 has five. Of these 13 parcels, 12 have vehicle ingress-egress access to Sideling Court, either directly or through pipestems. The other parcel, which constitutes the southeast corner of the original Beechwood section, exits to Beulah Road. Two of the houses in Beechwood—one in each section— were built in the early 20th century. Thus they predate the establishment of the subdivision by decades.  

The Beechwood Subdivision, organized largely around Sideling Court, straddles the border between the Town of Vienna and Fairfax County. The original Beechwood section is south of the Town line and thus part of the Town of Vienna, whereas Beechwood Section Two is largely north of the boundary and thus outside the Town. Each section has one vintage house and each has a small portion whose lineage differs somewhat from the larger parcels. The base map is from Fairfax County’s Map Wizard.
The original Beechwood section is in the center of the photo and outlined in the faint orange line. Beechwood Section 2 is outlined with blue lines. The star symbols denote the lots with the two early-20th-century houses that remain standing today. The base image is from the Fairfax County Historical Imagery Viewer.

When we trace the lineage of Beechwood, we have to explore four particular threads of ownership.  

  • In the case of two of these threads, what’s relevant is that Beechwood was formed from a combination of two properties. These in turn correspond largely to the original Beechwood section and Beechwood Section Two. Usually, a subdivision is a reflection of a whittling down of a large property over time into smaller and smaller parcels. Exactly as one would expect with the term “subdivision.”  Beechwood still involves a whittling-down, but from two larger parcels that had separate pedigrees for a period of their history.
  • Two small pieces of Beechwood have lineages that diverge from that of the larger parcels. In the early 20th century, one of these pieces (“C” on the graphic above) was transferred between the two larger parcels. The other piece (“D” on the graphic) was part of a different Colonial-Era land grant than the rest of Beechwood.

With that context, what follows is a history of the Beechwood Subdivision from the beginning of European settlement in the 17th century to the establishment of the subdivision in the late 20th century.  

Beechwood’s Sections Largely Share a Common Lineage to the Colonial Era

Like everything else in Northern Virginia, both sections of Beechwood were part of the Northern Neck Proprietary, land grants to a group of loyalists in the English Civil War of the 17th century (see the graphic below). By the early 18th century, these land grants were consolidated under the ownership of Thomas Fairfax, the Sixth Lord Fairfax, according to Connie and Mayo Stuntz in their “This Was Vienna, Virginia.” Lord Fairfax then issued his own land grants from the proprietary, the recipients of which were obligated to pay him rent. This process ended during the American Revolution. Nonetheless, almost all of what would eventually become Beechwood/Sideling Court appears to have remained in the hands of the Fairfax family until the 1850s. (“Appears” because there’s a little murkiness in the Revolutionary War period. This is the result of Virginia legislation directed at Loyalist property, a post-war landmark Supreme Court ruling that had the effect of favoring Loyalists, and the disappearance of Fairfax County property records that went missing many years later during the American Civil War).

The approximately five acres of today’s Beechwood Subdivision were part of the more than five million acres that constituted the Northern Neck Proprietary of the Colonial Era. John Browne created this graphic for Jenee Lindner for the Fairfax County History Commissioner’s 2015 Conference. It is published on the The Story of Ravenworth website for the website’s discussion of the Northern Neck Grant.

19th Century Developments

In 1852, the property left the hands of the Fairfax family. Reginald Fairfax sold his 481-acre tract in the Vienna area to the English immigrant Benjamin Thornton. Within these 481 acres was most of today’s Beechwood. Reginald Fairfax was a U.S. Navy officer who died early in the Civil War in service to the Confederacy. Benjamin Thornton, for his part, comes off as something of a rogue who had been been involved in sharp business dealings in England before he came to America in 1848. After he immigrated to the United States, he owned President Madison’s former estate, Montpelier, until 1854. Thornton’s acquisition of Reginald Fairfax’s land in Vienna and what would later be Reston appears to have been in anticipation of the building of the railroad (the current W&OD bike trail). The graphic below shows the Thornton parcel as it stood in 1860, immediately before the Civil War, with the future Beechwood sections at its easternmost point.

By the onset of the Civil War in 1860, Benjamin Thornton still owned most of the Vienna-area land that he had purchased from Reginald Fairfax in the early 1850s. This included almost all of what would later become the Beechwood Subdivision. In the 1980s, historian Beth Mitchell superimposed 1860 property boundaries and ownership data on a 1980s-era Fairfax County property map, an invaluable resource for getting one’s bearings when tracking the history of a neighborhood in the county.

Soon after the Civil War, Benjamin Thornton’s property transferred to the ownership of his brother, Joseph, who himself had fled from financial shenanigans in England. (The American repercussions of which would involve Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln at one point). In 1869, the land went to a Thornton crony, Samuel Stead. Since before the Civil War, the Thornton property had been tied up in various legal proceedings related to Benjamin’s debts and his failures to fully pay them. The final act of the long-running legal drama was in 1883, when a trustee appointed by the Fairfax County Circuit Court auctioned off the land to the well-to-do DC businessman John Van Riswick (who also had a Lincoln connection).  

After the death of John Van Riswick in 1886 and then his wife, Mary, a decade later, the property conveyed in 1897 to their two surviving adult daughters, Avarilla Lambert and Martina Carr, after the two resolved their highly publicized dispute over their mother’s will.

Lineages Diverge in the early 1900s

Soon after this in the early 20th century, the lineages diverge for the two major sections of the Beechwood subdivision. In addition, a small piece of land is put on an eventual path to become part of the Beechwood mix.

  • First, in 1901, the Van Riswick sisters sold the 105-acre-portion of their property that was north of the Vienna Town line to Frances W. “Frank” Pearson. That included the land that would eventually constitute almost all of Beechwood Section 2. It did not include what would later constitute most of the original Beechwood, south of the Town line.
  • Second, also in 1901, the Van Riswick sisters engaged in a land swap with a neighboring property owner, Alma DeLano Hine, the widow of Vienna’s first mayor (see the graphic below). As part of this swap, Avarilla and Martina acquired the sliver of land that is now at the extreme southeastern corner of the Beechwood subdivision. This sliver is a portion of today’s two lots in that location. The sliver was part of the Ayr Hill Tract, the lineage for which originated with the Colonial-Era Broadwater Patent and is discussed in articles about a nearby parcel and Civil War photos of Vienna
  • Third, in 1906, the Van Riswick sisters sold 65 acres immediately to the south of the Town line to Alma DeLano Hine. In other words, a tract that includes the Ayr Hill sliver in the second bullet above and all the rest of what today constitutes the Beechwood subdivision south of the Town line, but none of the land north of the Town line and covered in the first bullet above.
The 1901 sale to Frank Pearson by the Van Riswick sisters had the effect of dividing the land that decades later would constitute most of the Beechwood subdivision. However, an exchange of land between the sisters and Alma DeLano Hine included the transfer to the Van Riswicks of a small piece of the Ayr Hill Tract, which would ultimately become part of Beechwood.

At this point, we need to follow two threads, involving the portions north and south of the Town line.

1) Beechwood North of the Vienna Town Line: The Future Beechwood Section 2:

In 1903, Frank Pearson and his wife, Caron, partitioned their 105-acre tract for the benefit of their three daughters. One of these parcels, 30 acres bordering Beulah Road and just to the north of the Town line, went to their eldest daughter, Florence Rosetta Pearson Cockrill. Months after the 1903 partition, Frank Pearson, with the help of Florence’s husband, Jeremiah “Jeff” Cockrell, was buiding the house that still stands at the corner of Sideling Court and Beulah Road, judging from a Fairfax Herald article from the time. Regardless, the family of Florence and Jeff Cockrill appear to have been the first owner/inhabitants in the era of European settlement to actually live on the land that would eventually constitute the Beechwood Subdivision.

Florence Pearson Cockrell received a 30-acre parcel when her parents subdivided their land in 1903. At its southeastern corner, this parcel included most of what would later be Beechwood Section Two, circled in green.
Fairfax County’s property tax database gives 1910 as the year of construction for the former residence of Florence Pearson Cockrell and her husband, Jeff Cockrell. However, the Fairfax Herald articles below indicate that Florence’s father, the carpenter Frank Pearson, was building the house with Jeff as of 1903 and that son-in-law Jeff was living at the house in 1907, presumably with his family.
From the Fairfax Herald, 18 September 1903, five months after F.W. “Frank” Pearson and his wife, Caron, provided 30-acre parcels to daughters Florence and Ada.
From the Fairfax Herald, 15 November 1907. Frank Pearson’s son-in-law Jeff Cockrell, who was the husband of Frank’s daughter, Florence, lived on the property to the south of Frank’s. Son-in-law Ira David Hummer, married to Ada Pearson, lived on the property to the north of Frank and Caron’s residual parcel.
In the early 20th century, Frank Pearson built three houses for his family along the west side of Beulah Road. The southernmost went to his eldest daughter, Florence, and remains to this day as part of the Beechwood Subdivision. Frank and his wife, Caron, lived in the middle house but intended it to eventually go to their youngest daughter, Artie Belle. That house was demolished in the late 1960s. Ada, the Pearson’s middle daughter, received the northernmost house and lived in it until the early 1940s. Ada’s house survived until circa 2011.

In 1913, Florence died from a postpartum hemorrhage in connection with the birth of her fifth child, according to her death certificate. It appears that her husband, Jeff, stayed in the house with their children after his 1917 remarriage and at least until 1918. However, they were living elsewhere by the time of the 1920 census. At some point, Jeff Cockrell’s oldest daughter, Alice, participated in a lawsuit against her father regarding the property, and in 1921, the Fairfax County Circuit Court decreed that the 30 acres be sold. Which finally happened in 1925, to Olive R. Portch, for $4000. 

From the Fairfax Herald, 16 May 1913. Accessed via the Library of Virginia’s website.
Olive Portch, a stay-at-home mother, according to census and death records, is presumably with one of her sons. Of her nine children, five were boys: Ernest, Robert, Henry, Paul, and David. One of these boys, Henry, died in 1916 at Washington’s Children’s Hospital at age six months.

Olive Rae Troup Portch (1885-1952) and her husband, George (1882-1960), a carpenter, lived in the house until 1932, for at least some of the time probably with all eight of their surviving children, judging from census records. In 1932, Olive and George sold the 30 acres to Ted F. Bell and his wife, Gertrude.  Georgia-born Ted Franklin Bell (1886-1957) was a garage superintendent for the federal government, probably for the Department of the Interior, judging from census and draft records. Pennsylvania-born Marie Gertrude Deer Bell (1884-1959), divorced, married Ted in 1917. She was a clerk and later a supervisor in the federal government. The Bells do not appear to have had children.

In 1933, the Bells sold the 30 acres and the house to W.P. Shamhart.  William Preston Shamhart was a retired minister apparently for the Disciples of Christ, judging from his biography in an Antioch Christian Church anniversary brochure from 1953. A brochure from the church’s anniversary in 1978 suggests that W.P. moved to the Vienna area because the Customs Bureau had assigned his son to Washington. Once W.P. moved to the house on Beulah Road, he began attending Antioch Christian Church. After the incumbent minister became ill, W.P. came out of retirement to be Antioch’s new minister.  Antioch credits him with breathing new life into the church.  [Author’s note: a “thank you” to Virginia Rita for the Antioch anniversary brochures].

Ohio-born Reverend William Preston Shamhart (1863-1939). Photo on Findagrave.com posted by Melinda Carpenter.
Ohio-born Sara Ida Bolton (1865-1935) married W.P. Shamhart in 1884. She was a stay-at-home mother and gave birth to 11 children. Melinda Carpenter provided the photo to Findagrave.com.

Sarah Ida Shamhart, W.P.’s wife, died in 1935, and in 1936, W.P. sold the house and moved away, according to death and property records. The new owners of the 30 acres were James B. Moore Jr. and his wife, Edith. Texas-born James Bernard Moore, Jr. (1897-1992) was a WWI U.S. Army veteran and an architectural engineer for the U.S. Public Buildings Administration, according to census records and the record of his WWII draft registration. Birdie Edith Thorn (1900-1991), also born in Texas, married James in 1919 in a wedding that “was of a very unique and attractive style, symbolizing as it did the various colors of the rainbow,” according to the San Antonio Evening News. Edith had five children with James.

Hazel Glyn Barnes attended Chillicothe Business College in Missouri, according to the school’s 1931 yearbook.

In 1944, the Moores sold the property to Elwood O. and Hazel B. Dallas.  Elwood Orville Dallas (1906-1993) was born in Ohio and worked as an accountant, according to his obituary. Texas-born Hazel Glyn Barnes (1914-2007) completed four years of college and married Elwood in 1938 in Arlington, according to census and marriage records. Hazel worked as a bookkeeper early in her marriage before becoming a stay-at-home mother, judging from census information. She had three children with Elwood and later was a grandmother and great-grandmother, according to Elwood’s obituary.

In 1946, the Dallas’s sold the 30 acres to Frances D. Pilling. Frances Davis Pilling (1913-1982) was born in Spotsylvania County, but by 1920, her family was living in Vienna. She completed four years of high school. Before Frances acquired the Pilling property, she was an attendant at a government hospital, according to the 1940 census. At the time of her death she was a U.S Government retiree. Her husband, Pennsylvania-born Howard Lloyd Pilling (1909-1982), was a police officer and then a detective in Washington, DC. He had completed two years of high school. During WWII, he served as an officer in the Coast Guard. The couple do not appear to have had children. However, as of 1950 they had a young niece and nephew living at their house along with Frances’s mother, according to the census.

During the period of ownership by Frances and her husband, Howard Pilling, the 30 acres were divided up. In 1950, the Pillings sold 3.5 acres to David and Helene S. Sanderson. These 3.5 acres constituted the southeastern corner of the original 30 acres. This 3.5-acre parcel included the house. A portion of the 3.5 acres would eventually become the part of Beechwood that is north of the Town line and thus outside the Town of Vienna.  Francis David Sanderson (1907-2001) was born in Indiana, as was his wife, Helene Stuart Sanderson (1904-1975). David attended five years of college, Helene three, according to the 1940 census. David was an official for the American Red Cross. Helene worked for income for about one-third of 1939, but the census does not reveal what her occupation was. However, she appears to have had the first of her two children that same year.

In 1952, the Sandersons sold the 3.5 acres with the house to Maude T. and Edward L. Katzenbach. Edward was a Commander in the U.S. Navy, according to marginalia on the deed. Edward’s father had been the Attorney General for New Jersey and his brother would be the Attorney General in the Johnson Administration. Edward (1919-1974) was a prep school graduate and graduated from Princeton in 1940. He attended Harvard Law School for one year until he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. The Marine Corps granted him one day of leave to get married, and thus in 1942 Lieutenant Edward Lawrence Katzenbach, Jr. married Maude Applegate Thomas (1921-2013) in New Jersey. 

Maude was a “House of Morgan bride,” according to the wedding story in the New York Daily News; her father was the assistant treasurer for Morgan & Co. She was a graduate of the Chapin School and made her social debut in the 1939-40 season. She was attending Bryn Mawr as a senior at the time of her wedding and returned to complete her schooling afterwards. Later in life she worked extensively with the Camp Fire Girls, and she was an active member of the Episcopal Church for more than 50 years, according to her obituary. At the time of her death her survivors included a great-grandson.

Maude T. Katzenbach at Camp Mawavi in Prince William Forest, 1970. Cropped from photo posted to WikiTree.com by Suzanne Hye.

In 1944, Captain Katzenbach commanded a company in the 4th Marine Division in the Pacific theater, according to military records. Edward later recounted his wartime service to the United Press International: “I was in command of a 200-man, rubber-boat scout reconnaissance outfit which operated in the Pacific and got shot up at Saipan during World War II….” He was wounded in action, according to State of New Jersey casualty records. After the war he earned a doctorate in philosophy from Princeton and taught history at Princeton as well as Columbia, according to his obituary. He also served in the Kennedy Administration as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Education and Manpower Resources. In 1969, Oklahoma University appointed him as Vice President for research and public service, according to the school’s yearbook.

Edward and Maude had three children together before divorcing. Edward remarried in 1963 and had three children with his second wife, according to marriage records and his obituary. In 1974, Edward took his life at his home in New Jersey at age 55. His brother, the former attorney general, told the press that Edward “had been depressed with one thing or another and had not been well physically.”

In 1965, Dr. Edward L. Katzenbach Jr. of the American Council on Education spoke at Arlington’s Yorktown High School, according to The Washington Post. Photo from Yorktown’s 1965 yearbook, available at Ancestry.com.

In 1953, the Katzenbachs sold the house and its accompanying 3.5 acres to Charles W. Gunnels Jr., also a naval officer, and his wife, Phyllis O’Brien Gunnels. (No relation to the Gunnell family which features prominently in Vienna-area history). C.W. Gunnels’s naval service dated from before the outbreak of World War II. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, he was serving on the battleship USS California, which was sunk in the air raid. The Navy formally recognized him for his bravery and his commanding officer commended him for his efforts to save wounded sailors from drowning or burning to death. After subsequent service on a different battleship in the Atlantic theater—during the preparations for which service he apparently met Phyllis—he went to flight school and became a naval aviator. He eventually returned to the Pacific theater as an aviator on an aircraft carrier and took part in the very last bombing attack on Japan, in the period between the Nagasaki bomb and Emperor Hirohito’s surrender. After the war, he received stateside assignments, eventually to include a position at the Pentagon, which led to his purchase with Phyllis of the Vienna house.  

C.W. and Phyllis retained ownership of the house when the Navy assigned C.W. to an aircraft carrier operating in the Pacific. In April 1957, some two months before the twentieth anniversary of the start of his Navy career, Commander C.W. Gunnels, Jr. was killed in an aircraft training accident in Japan. C.W.’s death left Phyllis a widow with seven children.

A few months after C.W.’s death, Phyllis sold the house and the 3.5 acres to Edward and Margaret Elizabeth Symonds. I have been unable to find information that I am confident relates to Edward and Margaret.

In 1963, the Symonds sold the property to Johan H. and Nini C. DeGroot.

In 1964, the DeGroots further divided the property (see the graphic below). They sold 1.673 of the 3.5 acres to Oak Hill Farms, Inc. This was roughly the western half of the 3.5 acres and would eventually be developed as the cul-de-sac of Wareham Court, part of the Concord Green subdivision. The residue of the 3.5 acres, which was roughly the eastern half of the 3.5 acres, remained under the ownership of the DeGroots and would eventually become Beechwood Section 2.  

The lefthand map shows the DeGroot property (the circled parcel “3”) as it stood at the beginning of 1964. The DeGroots subdivided it that year, as shown on the righthand map, which is from 1965. They retained the house and a new, smaller parcel “3” on the righthand map, the future Beechwood Section 2. The new parcel to the west, “3A,” eventually became part of the neighboring subdivision developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Concord Green. To the immediate south of parcel “3” is parcel “174,” which would eventually become the original Beechwood Subdivision.

Johan Hendrik “Joop” DeGroot (1917-2004) and Hendrijntje Caterina “Nini” Koke (1919-2009) were born in the Netherlands. Hendrik served in the Dutch Army in World War II and was a prisoner of war of the Germans as of 1944, according to the DeGroot-Koke family tree on Ancestry.com. In 1945, the Nazis deported Johan to Germany as a slave laborer, according to the Fairfax County Sun Echo. The DeGroots and their six children immigrated to the United States in 1956 under an American aid program for victims who suffered particularly hard during the war. A Presbyterian church in Washington, D.C. sponsored them and helped Johan, a chemical engineer, to get a job with the Bureau of Standards, according to the Sun Echo. Joop and Nini had six children. “The DeGroots are well known in Vienna for their devotion to youth activities and have been taking an active part in many community activities,” including the Brownies, Boy Scouts, knitting classes, and service at the Vienna Presbyterian Church, noted the Sun Echo. In 1962, the family took the oath as U.S. citizens, prompting the newpaper’s story on their background, which in turn inspired a surprise party from the church on behalf of the DeGroots.

In 1978, the DeGroots sold the 1.837-acre residue, which included the house, to API, Inc.  

In May, 1979, API Inc and two trustees executed a Deed of Dedication and Subdivision for Beechwood Section Two, containing 1.837 acres of land, according to Fairfax County property records. 

One week after the dedication and subdivision, API Inc. sold the existing house and its lot—Lot 1 of Beechwood Section Two— to a married couple. I don’t know why API didn’t do what would have been typical: demolish the house so that a new one could be built along with the houses for the other lots. Whatever the reason, it’s to our good fortune that API didn’t and we have this nice legacy structure in our neighborhood.

In mid-1979, the owners of the lot with the house and the owners of the lot immediately to the north were involved in an eight-party transaction that resubdivided their lots such that there was a new boundary between the two parcels. With that, Beechwood Section Two, the section north of the Town line, was organized as it is today.

And as for the four houses that sit on Lots 2-5 of Beechwood Section Two, the Fairfax County property tax database puts their date of construction as 1980. 

2) Beechwood South of the Town Line: The Original Beechwood Section

After the 1901 land swap between the Van Riswick sisters and Alama DeLano Hine, Alma in 1906 sold the 30-acre parcel in two portions to Joseph and Annette Gibson Berry.  The parcel that interests us, along Beulah Road, was 41.37 acres.  

Joseph Berry (1869-1958) was the Fairfax County Surveyor; a descendant of the Gunnell family of longtime note in Vienna and Fairfax County; the last of a long line of county surveyors from the Gunnell-Berry-Paciulli family; a Vienna town councilman; the owner of a historic house that still stands at the northeast corner of Park and Church Streets NE; and presumably the namesake of Berry Street in Vienna. Annette Meade Gibson Berry (1870-1959) was active socially in the Vienna area, for instance by participating in the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Ayr Hill Garden Club, the Vienna Presbyterian Church, and various bridge luncheons, according to The Washington Post. Annette gave birth to two sons, one of whom died at age 39 as the result of an automobile accident.

Joseph Berry, in The Evening Star, 1951.

In 1906, Joseph Berry sold 10 acres of the 41-acre tract to Gray Money (1881-1924). These 10 acres constituted the northeastern corner of the tract, bordering Beulah Road to the east and the Town line to the north.

Gray Money was a civil engineer, carpenter, and automobile mechanic at different times of his life. In 1915, he married Pennsylvania-born Mattie Lucretia Phillips (1882-1942). His World War I draft registration card describes him as tall and slender with black hair. In 1924, Gray died from tuberculosis. Mattie, too, suffered from tuberculosis, and in 1942 she took her own life, according to her death certificate.

Sometime before Gray Money died, he sold a small triangular piece of land on the northeast corner of his property to Frank and Caron Pearson. I assume that was before Frank and Caron Pearson conveyed their southernmost 30 acres along Beulah Road to their daughter, Florence, in 1903. However, the deed for the Money-Pearson transaction was never recorded.  Meanwhile, as discussed above in the lineage of Beechwood Section Two, by 1925 the 30 acres were in the hands of Olive Portch. Thus in 1926, after some unknown prompting, the various relevant parties united to resolve the ambiguity. The Pearsons and Gray Money’s widow, Mattie, conveyed the triangular sliver to Olive Portch. This sliver is bounded by the Town line to the north, Beulah Road to the east, and—now—Sideling Court to the south.  

The 1970s-era plat in the deed of dedication for Beechwood Section Two, 5176:458, shows the triangular sliver of land from south of the Town line that had been added to the Pearson/Portch parcel and for which the title was quieted in 1926.

In 1920, Gray and Mattie L. Money conveyed three of their 10 acres to Alton Money. This was the northernmost portion of Gray and Mattie’s property and bordered the Town Line and the west side of Beulah Road. 

In 1922, the house that still stands at the southeast corner of what is now the Beechwood Subdivision was built on the west side of Beulah Road, according to Fairfax County’s online property tax database.  Presumably, the house was built for Alton Money. 

 Alton Money (1888-1960) was a younger brother to Gray Money. As a young man he worked on his parents’ farm. He served in the military during World War I, according to the 1930 census. By 1925, he had had a decade’s worth of experience with Willys-Knight and Overland automobiles and was managing the service department in the new Wardman Motor Car Company showroom and service facility near Thomas Circle in Washington, according to The Washington Post. Automobiles remained his vocation afterwards. In the 1940s he was an automobile inspector for the District government, judging from census and draft registration records. By the mid-1950s, he was a supervisor in the District’s Department of Motor Vehicles and Traffic. He also served as a constable in Fairfax County. While doing so in 1936, he suffered severe cuts to his head and face when he tried to arrest two District men for disorderly conduct at a Tysons Corner establishment, according to The Washington Post. He was active in Democratic Party politics and was elected to the Vienna Town Council.

Alton’s wife, Clara Lee Adams Money (1892-1987), was from the Adams family that maintained a longtime presence west of the railroad in the Clarks Crossing area and out toward Hunter Mill Road. Clara’s education was through four years of high school, according to the census. As of 1940 she worked as a government clerk; the 1950 census indicates that her employer was the Veterans Administration. She and Alton do not appear to have had children.

The Graham-Herrity family tree on Ancestry.com dates this photo to 1965, when Clara would have been in her early seventies.
When this photo was taken in 1937, Alton and Clara Money lived in the southern house, and the family of James and Edith Moore lived in the northern house. Both houses still stand today. The image is from the Fairfax County Historical Imagery Viewer. The road names in white text are where the roads of today are located.

In 1942, Alton and Clara conveyed the three acres and its improvements to Betty Walls Standish (1912-1996) and Myles Standish (1909-1970). Myles–born Henry James Standish Jr.–was an only-child born in the Bronx to a policeman and a stay-at-home mother, judging from census and birth records. According to his obituary, he was a descendant of the Myles Standish of Pilgrim fame and the 16th century Dutch admiral Michiel de Ruyter, a national hero for his role in wars against the English. At age 20, he changed his name to Myles, according to the Grafted In family tree on Ancestry.com. That same year, he traveled to Great Britain, according to British travel records, most likely the first of his many overseas trips. As of 1930, Myles was working in New York as a model for an artist’s studio, according to the census. Later that year, he entered service with the State Department as a clerk in the Foreign Service, according to a biographical sketch by the Department’s Lindsey Henderson. As of 1931 he was a Foreign Service Officer serving as a clerk in Cuba, where he remained until 1934, according to consular records and the Grafted In family tree. While in Cuba, he was promoted to Vice Consul. He held the same position in Manchester, England, from 1934 until 1937, according to the Grafted In family tree. During this tour he met Manchester-born Betty Walls.

The circumstances of Myles’s marriage to Betty were the subject of a wire service report that newspapers throughout the U.S. picked up in 1936. Soon after Myles had proposed to Betty, the Roosevelt Administration issued a new rule that forbade American diplomats from contracting marriages with foreign nationals unless the Secretary of State permitted it. Moreover, when diplomats requested permission, they also had to submit their resignation. The State Department could accept or reject the resignation at its discretion. Myles’s case was the first such marriage permitted–after his mandatory resignation was rejected– since the requirement was announced. That novelty plus his Pilgrim ancestry guaranteed the coast-to-coast newspaper coverage when the couple married in December, 1936.

Betty “Tinita” Walls was the daughter of an English doctor, judging from newspaper accounts. She attended the Royal College of Music in London, according to her obituary. As of 1937, she and Myles were living with the first of their two children in Marseilles, where Myles was the vice consul. Their first child was born in Switzerland, underscoring the cosmopolitan nature of the early years of Betty’s marriage to Myles.

Myles is stylish here in this wedding photo with Betty, but stylishness appears to have been a trait he maintained outside such ceremonial occasions. When he was on a World War II rescue mission in the south of France, discussed below, he was wearing a white suit and string gloves, his beneficiary later recounted. Source of photo: The Daily Mirror, via Newspapers.com. Source of anecdote: Ronald Weber, “The Lisbon Route: Entry and Escape in Nazi Europe.”

Myles Standish was a hero of the Second World War for his efforts to save Jews fleeing from the Nazis. The Standish family’s stay overseas extended from the period of heightening international tensions that led to the Second World War, then through the war’s outbreak, and into the subsequent horrors. After Nazi Germany’s conquest of France in 1940, Myles continued to serve in Marseilles, as the United States was still a neutral in the war. Before the conquest, France had already been a haven for European Jews who had escaped Germany or the countries that fell to it both before the war and after the outbreak, according to researcher Thomas F. Weiss. After France fell, many of these refugees fled to Marseilles, a port city, to escape Europe altogether. Marseilles at the time was in Vichy France. Vichy France was the collaborationist-controlled rump of France that the Nazis deigned to leave unoccupied. Weiss writes of these refugees:

“Here they were often stuck in a bureaucratic quagmire created by the reluctance of the [Vichy] government to issue exit visas and the reluctance of the American State Department to issue entry visas into the U.S.”

“Reluctance” may be too mild of a word, judging from a recent account by the State Department’s Lindsay Henderson, a consular historian. She indicates that it was a deliberate American policy to slow-roll the refugees. Henderson characterizes State Department policy towards the refugees as “[t]he greatest obstacle to obtaining a U.S. visa….The Department instructed consular officers working at embassies and consulates overseas to delay visa issuance as long as possible, which frustrated refugees’ attempts to reach places safer than Vichy France.”

Amidst this sobering context, Myles Standish made a difference. In support of rescue efforts by private organizations, Myles and his colleague Harry Bingham defied State’s policy. Henderson writes:

“…Standish and Bingham found ways to issue visas and provide travel documents to stateless refugees who no longer had passports. By issuing visas on documents they created themselves–‘affidavits in lieu of passport’–they are believed to have issued at least 2,500 visas, saving the lives of people who otherwise would have likely been deported to Nazi death camps.”

“An Affidavit In Lieu Of Passport,” with the distinctive signature of the Marseilles vice consul, Myles Standish. Alfred “Fred” Stein, the subject of the affidavit, went on to be an American street photographer and portraitist, according to Wikipedia. Researcher Thomas Weiss underscores the impact of Myles’s signature on such documents. In 2007, Weiss wrote on the Jewishgen.org website in regards to Myles, “I am beholden to him since he signed both my entry visa in to the U.S. and my mother’s in 1941 enabling us to escape Europe shortly before the curtain fell and no further emigration was possible.”

Standish and his colleague also took a direct hand in smuggling people to safety, according to Henderson. She writes in State Magazine:

“In the summer of 1940, Standish borrowed Bingham’s car and drove to Les Milles, a camp where Lion Feuchtwanger was imprisoned. [The Vichy French detained many refugees in camps]. Feuchtwanger was a German Jewish author and playwright hated by Hitler for his sharp criticism of the Nazi Party that began years before they came to power. Disguising Feuchtwanger as an old woman, Standish told French officials at checkpoints that the old lady in the back seat was his mother-in-law from the United States. Back in Marseilles, the consular officers [Standish and Bingham] hid Feuchtwanger at Bingham’s house–without the knowledge of their superiors–for several weeks until he was given an alias and a visa and smuggled out of France.”

Meanwhile, later in 1940, young Francis Almeida Luzzato and his parents had found their way to Marseilles. The Luzzatos were Italian Jews who had fled their homeland after Mussolini decreed severe restrictions on the liberties of Jewish citizens. “[W]e were among the thousands of refugees who had gravitated to Marseilles,” Luzzato wrote almost 60 years later for The Washington Post. “By then we were trying desperately to flee Europe altogether.” Luzzato continues:

“I can still see my father returning day after day from the U.S. Consulate. His face showed nothing but determination. One day, he was ushered in to speak to the American vice consul, whose name was Myles Standish. It was a strange, American-sounding naming that meant absolutely nothing to the thousands of refugees who waited outside the consulate. I know that my father, certainly, had no inkling that Myles Standish was one of the most historic of American names. To my parents, Vice Consul Standish was the one person in all of Vichy France who could grant us an American visa. When my father died several years ago, among his papers I found a copy of a letter he had been handed that day. It was addressed to the Vichy Autorite Competentes Francaise informing them that our American visa had been approved. The letter, dated Dec. 5, 1940, is signed by Myles Standish, Vice Consul des Etats-Unis d’Amerique.” 

Luzzato entitled his article, “Thank You, Myles Standish.”

Myles lost his job because of his work to save the refugees, according to consular historian Henderson, although she does not specify whether that is in reference to his position at Marseilles or his overall career at State. Regardless, when Myles’s tour was coming to a close or was cut short by Foggy Bottom in the spring of 1941, American relations with Germany had deteriorated markedly, to the point that just weeks after the family left Marseilles, a German submarine sank a U.S. merchant vessel, despite U.S. neutrality. Amidst such dangers, the family sailed from Lisbon to New York in May 1941. They lived in Washington and New York until late in the year, when Myles was reassigned to India, according to the Grafted In family tree and draft registration records. It was en route to this assignment and Karachi in what was then British India that their ship, the S.S. President Polk, called in San Francisco, according to immigration records. The date they called in San Francisco was December 7th, 1941, when, of course, Japan’s air raid on Pearl Harbor dragged the U.S. into World War II. The family did not continue on for the cross-Pacific journey. Myles instead was assigned to Aruba. He resigned from the State Department in mid-1942, timing that may indicate that when Henderson says Myles lost his job because of his Marseilles heroics, she’s referring to his career overall. 

Later in the war, Myles apparently worked for the War Refugee Board, established in 1944 to rescue and provide relief for the subjects of Nazi persecution, including Jews, judging from information on the Graft In family tree. Myles later served as a UN official and in positions in business and professional associations such as the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, according to his obituary. 

Myles and Betty separated in 1947 and divorced in 1948, according to Virginia marriage records. Both went on to remarry and each had a child with their new marriages. In 1976, they lost one of their children to a murder in California. Myles died before the murderer was apprehended and convicted in the early 1990s. In 1966, Betty participated in a tobacco company’s contest to come up with the best name for a thoroughbred, and her submission, “Eastward Flight,” won first prize. Thus she traveled to Churchill Downs to collect the prize, a two-year-old colt, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. When Betty died in the mid-1990s, she had two great-grandchildren. 

In 1946, near the end of their marriage, the Standishes conveyed their three acres in Vienna to Wilbur R. and Anjanet Hankes. 

Wilbur Ray Hankes (1921-2005) was born in Canton, Ohio to a steel mill foreman and his wife, according to the 1930 census. In high school he was a stand-out football player and served as class officer, judging from his obituary and a school yearbook. He majored in mechanical engineering at the Case School of Applied Science, the predecessor for today’s Case School of Engineering at Case Western Reserve University. During World War II he served on active duty with the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics and Office of Naval Research developing optical and aircraft instruments, according to his obituary. During his career he worked for a number of the storied firms of the defense industry–Boeing, Chrysler, Lockheed, among others–before retiring in the mid-70s to establish his own company. Among his patents were the “Heads Up Display” (HUD), the technology now ubiquitous in the military and other applications involving the projection of data directly in the line of sight of the user so he or she does not need to look down or otherwise away at an instrument cluster.

From the 1943 yearbook for the Case School of Applied Science.
The heads-up display on an FA-18 Hornet. Source: Wikipedia.

In 1942, Wilbur married Anjanet McKimmey (1921-2005), Ohio-born and a Canton resident. Anjanet was the daughter of a metallurgist, according to census records. She was a graduate of an all-girls secondary school in the Catholic Church diocese that encompassed Canton. Circa 1946, the year she and Wilbur bought the Vienna property, the couple had a child. Wilbur at the time was working as the director of the Washington office for Kollsman Instruments, an avionics and optics firm, according to his obituary, explaining their interest in the Vienna property.

Anjanet and Wilbur separated in 1948, according to the Washington Evening Star; the circumstances of their estrangement appear to have been difficult ones. As of 1950, Anjanet and Wilbur were still separated and she and her young daughter were living in Canton, according to the census. The couple divorced at some point in the early 1950s, judging from the timing of Wilbur’s second marriage. Wilbur met his second wife, a flight attendant, on a flight in 1952, and they married later that year, according to one of his obituaries. They were married for more than 50 years until Wilbur’s death. Anjanet appears to have remained single. Her gravestone is inscribed with “La Artiste,” giving us a sense of her interests or talents.

In 1947, Wilbur R. and Anajet Hankes conveyed the three acres to Charles Munson Ellison and Grace S. Ellison.

Charles M. Ellison Jr. (1915-2000) was a native New Yorker. He “belonged to an old Bayville family,” to borrow a characterization from his father’s obituary, referring to a village on Long Island’s North Shore. Charles graduated from Syracuse University with a political science major and attended American University’s School of Public Affairs, according to Grace’s wedding announcement and much later obituary. Charles and Grace married in 1939. As of 1940, he worked in Dallas as an economist at the Department of Agriculture, according to the census and his draft registration. Charles and Grace remained in Dallas for two years, after which they moved to Washington, D.C., where Charles worked for the State Department. Charles served in the military during World War II, according to the 1950 census. He and Grace also began a family, which eventually grew to include four children. As of 1950, the Ellisons were living in the Vienna house with their three young children at the time and Grace’s parents, according to the census. Charles was working as a personnel officer for the State Department. His income the previous year was $8200. Grace was a stay-at-home mother. In 1952, Charles, Grace, and their four young children sailed to Genoa for a two-year stay in Europe, according to U.S. immigration records. Charles had become a Foreign Service Officer and he was en route to a Bonn, Germany, for what ended up as two-and-a-half year tour, judging from Grace’s obituary. The family returned to Virginia in 1954. In 1962, Charles received a slot at the National War College for a training tour, according to the Foreign Service Journal. Circa 1966-67, he was the Director of the Office of Cultural Presentations at the State Department, according to Penny M. Von Eschen’s “Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War.” By the late 1980s, Charles and Grace were living in Florida in retirement, according to address records.

Grace Marjorie Simpson Munson (1915-2023–yes, 107 years!) was born at the family home in upstate New York, according to her obituary. When she was 13 and then for the two subsequent years, “she won the title ‘Rochester’s Perfect Girl,’ in a city-wide physical culture contest emphasizing posture,” as her obituary recounted. In her youth she vacationed at one of New York’s Finger Lakes, Lake Canandaigua, and returned often, apparently also in adulthood. After high school, Grace attended the Mechanics Institute–now the Rochester Institute of Technology–and then transferred to Syracuse University. As of 1939, she was the retail coordinator for the public schools in Newport News, according to her engagement announcement. Her obituary elaborates: she was teaching Retailing and Consumer Relations for a year at a Newport News high school. For a decade while in the Washington area, Grace taught sewing, one of her interests. She also was active in the Lutheran Church. Her obituary summarizes her interests: “Grace enjoyed family, sewing, reading, church, bridge and watching her stock investments.” For many years in retirement, Grace participated in a group whose members would sit with and comfort the dying whose families could not be present. Whereas Charles lived a long life to his mid-80s, Grace–born in the same year–lived another 22 years beyond that, a remarkable longevity that blessed her not only with 11 great-grand children, but also three great-great grandchildren.

In 1960, the Ellisons conveyed the three acres to Harman and Mary Van Der Woude. Dr. Harman Van Der Woude was born in the Netherlands, where he lived for five years under the Nazi occupation, according to The Washington Post. In 1953, Harman and Mary sailed from Rotterdam to New York to immigrate to the United States, according to immigration records. He was a Dutch-educated OB/GYN. From the mid-1970s to at least the mid-1980s, he practiced in Alexandria, according to the Post. As of the late 1980s and at least into the late 1990s, he practiced in Manassas, according to newspaper articles and advertisements.

Mary Susanne de Haan was born in the Netherlands in 1931, according to her obituary. She and Harman had four children. The couple were separated by 1976, according to Fairfax County property records. They subsequently divorced and remarried others. At an unspecified time, Mary worked in California as a librarian. When she then moved to Faquier County, “she lived out her passion with her Nubian goats,” according to her obituary. “She was very involved and dedicated to the goal milk business.” When Mary died in 2021, she had two great-grandchildren.

This photo, from 1960, shows the two “legacy” houses–circled in blue–of the future Beechwood Subdivision. The northern house sits on today’s Beechwood Section Two; the southern house sits on the original Beechwood subdivision. Edward and Margaret Symonds owned the northern house when this photo was taken in 1960. That year, Charles and Grace Ellison sold the southern house to Harman and Mary Van Der Woude. The dividing line between the two parcels makes clear where the boundary runs between the Town of Vienna and Fairfax County. Meanwhile, the Ayr Hill Heights Subdivision has arrived to the south.

In 1977, the Van Der Woude’s sold the three acres to API, Inc. As in the previous transactions, the house conveyed, too. Late that same year, API sold the three acres to Dale Construction, and then Dale Construction and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors executed the Deed of Dedication and Subdivision for the Beechwood Subdivison [the original Beechwood], totaling 2.9958 acres. According to the county’s property tax database, the houses of the original Beechwood—other than the 1922 house on Beulah Road—were built in 1978.  

In 1978, the Beechwood Subdivision, outlined in blue, made its first appearance on the Fairfax County Property Map for tax grid 38-2. Note the parcel on the same side of Beulah Road and immediately to the north of Beechwood, identified as a parcel “3.” That is the future Beechwood Section 2. The Degroots sold the parcel to the developer in 1978. The base map is from the Fairfax County Digital Map Viewer.
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One Response to Sideling Court and the Beechwood Subdivision

  1. Sara Roades says:

    Fascinated by Myles Standish’s impact during WWII. also interesting how many of the women were educated and worked outside the home. More divorces than I would have guessed as well! I’m amazed that you were able to research so much information! Thank you!

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